Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Monday, July 28, 2025. Today‘s Stocks On The Contrarian Radar©️segment features WHR and starts at the bottom of this page.

State of Play

Last night saw the announcement of a trade deal between the US and Europe. That is not having much of an impact as we eye or board of indicators for signs of direction at 0745 ET:

* Stock index futures are pointing a bit higher, led by tech. The Nasdaq is +0.4% with S&P 500 +0.2%;

* Cryptos are gaining a bit of ground with Bitcoin +0.5% to trade around $118,700;

* Commodities aren’t doing much. WTI crude oil is +1.3% to trade around $66/barrel. Copper is unchanged. Gold and silver also unchanged;

* Bonds aren’t doing anything. The 10-year yields 4.40%.

Known Events

It’s a massive week of earnings, Fed, and economic data but most of that doesn’t come until later in the week. For today, there isn’t much going on. A couple of earnings after the close is about it:

Waste Management (WM ), Whirlpool (WHR ) and Tilray (TLRY ) are the main names there.

Tomorrow the earnings party gets started for real, with UnitedHealth (UNH ), SoFi (SOFI ), PayPal (PYPL ), Boeing (BA ), Spotify (SPOT ), UPS (UPS ), Procter & Gamble (PG ), Royal Caribbean (RCL ) and JetBlue (JBLU ) — and that’s all before the open!

Other earnings highlights this week include Meta (META ) and Microsoft (MSFT ) after Wednesday’s close and Apple (AAPL ) and Amazon (AMZN ) on Thursday evening.

The Fed concludes its interest rate meeting on Wednesday. The Fed is not expected to move its key policy rate from its 4.25-4.5% target. Friday brings non-farm payrolls.

The Bottom Line

The trade deal with Europe is nice and should provide a boost to risk assets today. But upside may be limited just because of all the data we’re getting later in the week. Those figures will need to play along with the bullish mantra for this to be sustainable. Payrolls on Friday are obviously the big one but earnings and the Fed also have the potential to upend things.

When it comes to the Fed, investors will be looking for indications that there will be interest rate cuts at the next meeting on Sept. 17. Right now Fed fund futures are pricing in a 60% chance of a cut. We’ll discuss the Fed more in Wednesday’s episode.

Anything companies say in their earnings that speaks to slowing consumer spending in the US would surely also trip up all the good cheer. On that note…

Stocks On The Contrarian Radar©️

You may want to keep an eye on Whirlpool (WHR ) earnings this afternoon. This company makes not just jacuzzis but washers, dryers, kitchen appliances, and more. For many families, washers and dryers are the biggest purchase they will make outside of cars and houses. So what management says about the outlook for these big-ticket items is well worth paying attention to.

Where WHR’s performance is concerned, that has been quite ugly. The stock has kind of gone nowhere in years, trailing the S&P 500 by substantial margins:

Given the company’s products it is no surprise that it is treated — perhaps correctly —as a proxy for the housing market. This leaves it trading at compelling valuations:

* 13x forward earnings

* 0.8x EV/forward sales

* 0.4x forward sales

* 7x forward cash flows

Earnings excepted, those are pretty compelling multiples, all well below the median for the industry.

Unfortunately, the balance sheet tells a very different story:

* $8 billion in net debt versus a market cap of just $5.6 billion

* Unsold inventory accounts for $2.4b of its $5.4b current assets. Offsetting that is $3.5b of accounts payable

* Almost $6b of its $16b of total assets are goodwill and other intangibles versus $13.7b of total liabilities

* Almost $5b of the total debt is long term, meaning it carries a higher interest rate.

Ugly, dawg.

The verdict

Sometimes things are cheap for a reason. WHR’s balance sheet should alarm any potential investor. This will explain — and fully justify — the stock’s depressed valuations.

Sure, once interest rates move lower and the housing market recovers it will greatly help WHR’s fortunes. But when might that be? More importantly, the company needs to continue to service its debt in the interim. It is also sitting on (literally) billions of dollars of unsold inventory.

WHR does have a sizable dividend of $7/share, corresponding to almost 7% at current prices. That should probably be cut, if not eliminated outright. It would cause the stock to drop more in the short term but would make it a lot more appealing.

To management’s credit, long-term liabilities have dropped over the last year, from $6.7b to their current level of $4.8b. Maybe the ugliest days of the balance sheet are in the past. But a lot of work still needs to be done for this thing to be investable.

Maybe if today’s earnings show continued improvement to the balance sheet and a sizable cut to the dividend payout the stock will become more appealing. But those prospects appear to be remote at this point…

Housekeeping

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